President Obama wants to go where the Supreme Court refused to tread. As part of his cybersecurity and privacy initiatives, which we discussed last week, the President would strengthen the federal anti-hacking provisions of...more

Canada’s new Combating Counterfeit Products Act officially took effect on January 1, 2015. As part of the ongoing overhaul of Canada’s much neglected intellectual property regime, this new tool for content and brand...more

Greetings, Court Fans!
What began as a trickle of decisions from the Court's October sitting has swiftly burgeoned into a flood. Yesterday, the Court announced decisions in three more cases, on top of the three decisions...more

After years of calls for reform from intellectual property rights owners, the Canadian government has enacted new legislation in an effort to fight counterfeiters acting on a commercial scale. Bill C-8, the Combating...more

Observers following the legal issues surrounding the prosecution of David Nosal will be watching closely in 2015 as the former Korn Ferry executive returns to the Ninth Circuit to appeal his 2013 conviction on three counts of...more

Companies May Get a New Weapon in the Fight Against Economic Espionage -
Efforts to protect property from global threats gained momentum in Washington this summer with the introduction of a pair of bills that would...more

We're back with summaries of the first signed decisions of the term, Warger v. Shauers (13-517) on whether Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b) precludes juror testimony during a proceeding in which a party seeks to secure a new...more

Plant Breeders are Learning the Value of Protecting Their Inventions -
Agricultural espionage: it’s not exactly the stuff of John le Carré novels. But recently a Chinese woman was charged in a plot to steal U.S. corn...more

Thomas Pink Ltd v Victoria’s Secret UK Ltd [2014] EWHC 2631 (Ch)
Two particular points for brand owners to take away from the decision:
1. If faced with an invalidity challenge on the grounds of s3(1)(b) or (c)...more

Fall 2014 -
The Global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP takes great pride in announcing the Summer 2014 edition of The World in US Courts: Orrick’s Quarterly Review of Decisions Applying US Law To Global...more

It's a commonplace occurrence in Silicon Valley for skilled employees to move from one company to another, followed quickly by a civil trade secret lawsuit alleging that the employee stole trade secrets from his prior...more

Until recently, trade secrets have been mostly overlooked by federal lawmakers. While federal laws govern patents, trademarks, and copyrights, trade secret protection has been left primarily to the states, most of which have...more

Amendments to the UK design law regime came into effect on October 1st 2014. Businesses should be conscious of a number of significant changes under the Intellectual Property Act 2014, as well as further changes which are due...more

In our modern, ever-electronic, workplace, it continues to become ever-easier for dishonest employees to help themselves to their employer’s most sensitive and valuable assets through wholesale electronic copying of...more

You are general counsel to a company, and your CEO steps into your office, clutching his iPhone in one hand and wiping sweat from his brow with the other, and tells you that a compromising photograph of him was stolen from...more

How customs can help you in your battle against fake goods -
Smuggling is a common theme in popular literature and films, inspiring clandestine plots and romantic nostalgia. In reality, smuggling fake goods takes a...more

Professor Nimmer once identified the “weakest infringement claims of all time” as those involving attempts by copyright holders to prevent their copyrighted work from being used as evidence against them in court. “It seems...more

You wake on a Tuesday morning expecting to have an average day at work. You are skimming through the emails that came in while you were asleep, when you notice an email from one of your employees. He is not only giving his...more

Bloomberg recently reported that Walmart spent $439 Million in the past two years related to a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) investigation . Moreover, Walmart predicts that it will spend an additional $200 Million to...more

Yihao “Ben” Pu is probably coming to grips with the phrases “crime doesn’t pay…” and “don’t do the crime unless you’re willing to do the time….” In federal court in Chicago, on Thursday, August 7, 2014, Pu, a former...more

The U.S. District Court in San Francisco was busy this month sentencing defendants in two of the year’s biggest trade secrets cases.
First, on July 10, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White sentenced Walter...more

Last month, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the convictions of co-conspirator couple Yu Qin and Shanshan Du, who were convicted in 2012 of trade secrets theft. A jury in the Eastern District of Michigan had found that Du...more